The Best Air Mattress For Most People

If you need a mattress for guests (or for yourself), an air mattress is likely the most comfortable option. They offer a similar height and surface area to a real bed while still storing down into a relatively small package and working with your regular sheets. After researching dozens of guest-bed options, including futons, camping pads, folding cots, and foam mattresses, and sleeping on four air mattresses, we think the SoundAsleep Dream Series is the best choice for your overnight visitors. Available in queen and twin mattress sizes, the SoundAsleep offers a great combination of comfort, control, and customer service, and it didn’t deflate in the night, giving better back support. Plus, it’s taller than cheaper air mattresses, which makes it easier to climb onto. The Insta-Bed Raised Air Mattress with Insta III Pump (Queen) makes a great budget pick, if you don’t mind sacrificing having a slightly shorter mattress

How we picked and tested

An air mattress, no matter how expensive or well made, is not meant to replace a real mattress. It won’t withstand nightly use over a long period of time (and many companies specify that if you use the mattress as your primary bed, you’ll void the warranty). An air mattress should be reserved for occasional use, or even up to a week or two, at a time.

After reading user reviews and assessing our own experiences sleeping on air mattresses, we settled on a few criteria that make an air mattress good for home use:

A built-in electric pump. These pumps allow for the fastest and fullest inflation and deflation, and an attached pump means you don’t have to store (and locate) an extra item.

A relatively comfortable sleeping surface. An air mattress will never be as comfortable as a real mattress. But it should hold air and not noticeably deflate during the night, and easy to climb in and out of.

Good customer service and a decent warranty. Air mattresses are not particularly durable, but a good one should still last up to four years with occasional use, or about a year if used regularly. But a good warranty against manufacturing defects and responsive customer service helps.

A reasonable price. Under $60, and you probably won’t find a quality queen-size air mattress with a good warranty. But over $150, you’ll reach a point of diminishing returns.

We tested four air mattresses by sleeping on each of them for one or two nights. We evaluated each one for comfort, whether it noticeably lost air or sank during the night, and how easy it was to setup and take down.

The SoundAsleep Dream Series is the best air mattress we’ve tried, with the strongest combination of performance, a long warranty, and highly responsive and motivated customer service. At its current price of $120, it’s not the cheapest air mattress, but we think it still offers the best value overall.

The SoundAsleep inflates fully in under four minutes—faster than the other mattresses we tested, but not an inordinate wait by any means. Its simple dial controls actually gave us more control over filling it to our desired firmness than mattresses with built-in firmness settings. The queen-size SoundAsleep rose to 19 inches high, which is just the height we were looking for, and we had no problems getting our queen-size fitted sheets to grip the mattress snugly, even though it was slightly smaller than a standard queen-size mattress). Like the other mattresses we tested, the SoundAsleep is made from PVC with a flocked, velvety fabric top, which helps with comfort, and to keep the sheets secure.

The SoundAsleep didn’t noticeably lose air or sink during the night—in fact, it stayed comfortably firm for two consecutive nights without needing to be topped up. As with all air mattresses, there was some creaking and jiggling, which is more noticeable with two sleepers on a larger mattress. But everyone still slept comfortably through the night, with no reported soreness in the morning. The SoundAsleep’s pump also deflates the mattress quickly, and comes with a woven nylon storage bag that packs down to about 14 by 14 by 13 inches.

The SoundAsleep also comes with a one-year warranty for manufacturing defects, which is the longest of the mattresses we considered (although we think it should really be the bare minimum). SoundAsleep will usually ask for a photo of the defect, or ask you to mail the item back, depending on the nature of the problem and how long you’ve owned the mattress. SoundAsleep will sometimes go above and beyond to keep its customers happy as well—when Wirecutter editor Harry Sawyers’s SoundAsleep mattress developed a leak after 15 months of use, the company agreed to repair it free of charge, even though it was out of warranty.

You should clean your air mattress after using it with water and a mild soap solution and let it air dry. Most manufacturers recommend against storing your deflated air mattress in areas with high temperature fluctuations or humidity, such as an unfinished basement or garage, as this can stress the materials. The air mattresses we tested all come with patching kits to repair small holes as well.

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